• As shady oil cabals gun for his jugular
• Fraudulent characters conspire with underlings to malign the minister of petroleum
Blood sport is brought to its apogee in the arena of the Nigerian rumour mill, every time the discussion segues to Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, the amiable Minister of Petroleum. There is no reasoning with the malicious talebearers; for when their rumour misses fire, they knock you down with the butt end of it – that is why they wield gossip like a pistol.
Kachikwu has over time become the meal ticket of the random gossip and hardened traducer earnestly inured in the enterprise of ceaseless fibbing and slander.
It has become the past time of many a gossip to fabricate acerbic news about him to get back at him. As you read, some fraudulent characters have set their wile and dark arts on Dumebi Kachikwu, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu’s younger brother.
Dumebi is currently at the receiving end of a hateful rumour; mischief makers in the country’s oil sector are spreading unpalatable news about this self-effacing dude.
Curiously, however, Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu hardly fits the bungling public officer stereotype. He cuts the full portrait of the quintessential reformer needed to sanitize the nation’s petroleum sector, no doubt. He certainly rides the tide of the rough, rude sea of the petroleum industry, like a storm-hardened sailor.
Since he assumed duties, profiteers from the erstwhile corrupt regime of the nation’s oil sector have embarked on a campaign of calumny against him. Following their inability to woo him and induce him to compromise, these human elements comprising major oil magnates and NNPC staff in particular, have begun a smear campaign meant to tarnish the image of the minister and sabotage his efforts to rid the oil sector of corruption.
However, in the wake of the malicious rumours, friends and business associates of Dumebi dismissed the uncomplimentary tales about him claiming that, he is a very decent and law-abiding gentleman.
According to a close friend of Dumebi, “As far as we are concerned, the annoyingly comical news not only beggars belief, but skirts moral boundaries. The report which attempted to disparage the hardworking man was curiously mischievous”. Apart from the fact that the misguided news was needless when placed side-by-side with the sense of news judgment; it was also lacking in substance and more like a space-filler. And if you ask me, this particular story is not only baseless and undeserving of attention, it is also professionally rascally and a poorly choreographed bunch of lies.”
